̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - fiction

Opinion: How to write a best-selling novel

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 09:33:53 +0000

So you want to write a novel? Of course you do. Everyone wants to write a novel at some stage in their lives. While you’re at it, why not make it a popular bestseller? Who wants to write an unpopular worstseller? Therefore, make it a thriller. It worked for Ian Fleming and Frederick Forsyth …

Every now and then I come across excellent advice for the apprentice writer. There was a fine recent article, for example, in ̽��ֱ��Big Thrill (the house magazine of International Thriller Writers) on “how to lift the saggy middle” of a story. Like baking a cake. And then there is Eden Sharp’s ̽��ֱ��Thriller Formula, her step-by-step would-be writer’s self-help manual, drawing on both classic books and movies. I felt after reading it that I really ought to be able to put theory into practice (as she does in ̽��ֱ��Breaks).

But then I thought: why not go straight to the source? Just ask a “New York Times No. 1 bestseller” writer how it’s done. So, as I have recounted here before, I knocked on Lee Child’s door in Manhattan. For the benefit of the lucky Child-virgins who have yet to read the first sentence of his first novel (“I was arrested in Eno’s Diner”), Child, born in Coventry, is the author of the globally huge Jack Reacher series, featuring an XXL ex-army MP drifter vigilante.

It is a golden rule among members of the Magic Circle that, when asked: “How did you do that?”, magicians must do no more than smile mysteriously. Child helpfully twitched aside the curtain and revealed all. Mainly because he wanted to know himself how he did it. He wasn’t quite sure. He only took up writing because he got sacked from Granada TV. Now he has completed 20 novels with another one on the way. And has a Renoir and an Andy Warhol on the wall. Windows looking out over Central Park. Grammar school boy done well.

Cigarettes and coffee

He swears by large amounts of coffee (up to 30 cups, black, per day) and cigarettes (one pack of Camels, maybe two). Supplemented by an occasional pipe (filled with marijuana). “Your main problem is going to be involuntary inhalation,” he said, as I settled down to watch him write, looking over his shoulder, perched on a psychoanalyst’s couch a couple of yards behind him.

Lee Child and Andy Martin in NYC. Jessica Lehrman, Author provided

Which was about one yard away from total insanity for both of us.

Especially given that I stuck around for about the next nine months as he wrote Make Me: from the first word (“Moving”) through to the last (“needle”), with occasional breathers. A bizarre experiment, I guess, a “howdunnit”, although Child did say he would like to do it all again, possibly on the 50th book.

Maybe I shouldn’t be giving this away for free, but, beyond all the caffeine and nicotine, I think there actually is a magic formula. For a long while I thought it could be summed up in two words: sublime confidence. “This is not the first draft”, Child said, right at the outset, striking a Reacher-like note. “It’s the only draft!”

Don’t plan, don’t map it all out in advance, be spontaneous, instinctive. Enjoy the vast emptiness of the blank page. It will fill. Child compares starting a new book to falling off a cliff. You just have to have faith that there will be a soft landing. Child calls this methodology his patented “clueless” approach.

Look Ma, I’m a writer

To be fair, not all successful writers work like this. Ian Rankin, for one (in his case I relied on conventional channels of communication rather than breaking into his house and staring at him intently for long periods) goes through three or four drafts before he is happy – and makes several pages of notes too.

Ian Rankin, creator of Inspector Rebus. Mosman Library, CC BY

And yet, with his Rebus series set in Edinburgh, Rankin has produced as many bestsellers as Child. Rebus also demonstrates that your hero does not necessarily have to be 6’5” with biceps the size of Popeye’s. And can be past retiring age too, as per the most recent Even Dogs in the Wild.

Child has a few key pointers for the would-be author: “Write the fast stuff slow and the slow stuff fast.” And: “Ask a question you can’t answer.” Rankin also advises: “No digressions, no lengthy and flowery descriptions.” He has a style, and recurrent “tropes”, but no “system”. And Child is similarly sceptical about Elmore Leonard’s “10 rules of writing”. “‘Never use an adverb’? Never is an adverb!” And what about Leonard’s scorn for starting with the weather? “What if it really is a dark and stormy night? What am I supposed to do, lie?”

Elmore Leonard at the Peabody Awards. Peabody Awards, CC BY

Child never disses other writers. OK, almost never (there is one he wants to challenge to unarmed combat). But he is dismissive of a certain writerly attitude, a self-conscious mentality which he summarises as follows: “Hey, Ma, look – I’m writing!” And here we come close to the secret, the magic potion that if you could bottle it would be worth a fortune in book sales. Do the opposite. If you want to be a writer, the secret is: don’t be a writer. Try and forget you are writing (difficult, I know).

This is why both Child and Rankin speak with such reverence for the narrative “voice”. And why both privilege dialogue. ̽��ֱ��successful writer is a throwback to a vast, lost, oral tradition, pre-Homer. Another thing, fast-forwarding, they share in common: the default alter ego is rock star. It’s all about the vibe. Everything has to sound good when you read it aloud.

Art is theft

But if you seriously want to be a writer, think like a reader. Child explained this to me the other day in relation to his novel, Gone Tomorrow, set in New York, which is now often used to teach creative writing. “I introduce this beautiful mysterious woman. I started out thinking: I want my hero to go to bed with her. And then I thought: hold on, isn’t the reader going to be asking: ‘What if she is … bad?’” A small but crucial tweak: one letter – from bed to bad.

“So!“ you might well conclude, “isn’t this bloke like one of those con men who offer to show you how to make a fortune (for a modest outlay) and you think: ‘Well, why don’t you do it then?'” Fair comment. Which is why I am starting a novel right now about an upstart fan who tricks his way into a successful writer’s apartment and steals all his best ideas. I don’t know why, it just came to me in a flash of inspiration. Maybe that, in a word, is the core of all great art: theft.

Andy Martin in conversation with Lee Child is part of the Cambridge Literary Festival on April 14.

Andy Martin, Lecturer, Department of French, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Andy Martin (Department of French) discusses the "magic potion" for writing a thriller.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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‘Writing is but another form of conversation’: Laurence Sterne at 300

sj387 — Sat, 23 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0000

In his introduction to the 1967 Penguin edition of Laurence Sterne’s ̽��ֱ��Life & Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, the critic Christopher Ricks describes the novel as the greatest shaggy-story in the English language. He was right: it is an extraordinary book characterised by great loops of diversion that take the reader into the realms of theology, philosophy, theories of medicine and more. It has no beginning, middle and end – Tristram isn’t even born until Volume 3 - and Sterne employs a whole range of stylistic flourishes and typographical devices, including asterisks, squiggles and blank pages.

Earlier this year Cambridge academic Mary Newbould published a book – Adaptations of Laurence Sterne’s Fiction - that discusses the many ways in which Laurence Sterne’s novels (A Sentimental Journey was even more popular than Tristram Shandy) have inspired imitations, parodies and adaptations. Newbould has now curated an online exhibition of Sterne-related material (so-called Sterneana) that will appear on the website of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library to mark the writer’s birthday 300 years ago.

̽��ֱ��online exhibition features material preserved in the Oates Collection - an archive of Sterneana collected by JCT Oates, a former librarian at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library (UL). ̽��ֱ��Oates Collection comprises some 600 or so items – from dating from the early 1760s to 1800 - which were gathered by Oates, an enthusiastic proponent of Sterne’s work. ̽��ֱ��collection, which built on an earlier archive, was given to the UL in 1986 and represents a unique resource for those studying the work of Sterne and his contemporaries.

“ ̽��ֱ��Oates Collection – which ranges from pamphlets and handbills to musical scores and illustrations – demonstrates the breadth and diversity of the reception of Sterne’s fiction as measured through the imaginative responses that his work has sparked. He provoked strong reactions not just among his audience – who loved or loathed him – but also among other writers and artists who were inspired, perhaps liberated even, by Sterne’s defiance of the conventions of what a novel should be,” said Newbould.

̽��ֱ��publication of Tristram Shandy in 1760 unleashed a spate of satirical pamphlets that lampooned Sterne’s narrative oddities and provocative humour. Most famous is ̽��ֱ��Clockmakers Outcry: it takes its cue from Tristram’s account of how his father saw to all the ‘little family concernments’ of winding the family clock – and other more intimate matters besides – on the first Sunday of the month ‘get them all out of the way at one time’. Sterne’s imitators also had great fun mocking his use of asterisks to disguise (and draw attention to) rude words. Pamphlets liberally sprinkled with stars in this way include ̽��ֱ��Life and Amours of Hafen Slawkenbergius, Author of the Institute of Noses, the nose being a famously Sternian euphemism for a p***s.

̽��ֱ��characters in Sterne’s fiction were brought to life by some of the greatest artists and illustrators of his era. They include William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson and George Cruikshank. “Sterne’s gift for drawing his characters by using just a few, sparse details gave his readers plenty of scope for imagination and offered the artists who illustrated his novels licence to explore scenes and settings in all manner of ways – from the comic, to the touching, and even to the erotic,” said Newbould.

JCT Oates was disingenuous when he wrote of his collection of Sterneana that it represents the ‘rubbish of literature’. In a lecture, given at Jesus College in 1968 to mark the bicentenary of Sterne’s death, he said: ‘I confront the visitor not with the important books that he wishes to see but with the trivial books of which he has never heard’. It’s from this ‘trivia’ that we learn so much about the context within which Sterne pushed the boundaries of writing and created novels that have intrigued us for so long.

For more information about this story contact Alexandra Buxton, Office of Communications, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge amb206@admin.cam.ac.uk 01223 761673

̽��ֱ��Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman turned a Yorkshire clergyman into a literary celebrity. Three hundred years after his birth on 24 November 1713, Laurence Sterne’s quirky take on the novel continues to inspire. Dr Mary Newbould explores Sterne’s lasting impact.

He provoked strong reactions, not just among his audience, but also among other writers and artists who were inspired by Sterne’s defiance of the conventions of what a novel should be.

Dr Mary Newbould

300 years of Laurence Sterne (contains one explicit image)

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CS Lewis: 50 years after his death a new scholarship will honour his literary career

sj387 — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 12:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��author CS Lewis, best known to the general public for his children’s classics ̽��ֱ��Chronicles of Narnia, died 50 years ago on 22 November. He was much more than a children’s author: he was also a brilliant scholar, holding prestigious academic positions first at Oxford and then at Cambridge, as well as an influential Christian thinker.

In 1954, Lewis was awarded the chair in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, a post that was founded with him in mind. In order to support research in that broad field of Lewis’s interests, Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� is in the process of establishing a CS Lewis Scholarship that will help to fund an outstanding graduate student.

Lewis will be honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey at a ceremony on the anniversary of his death. His memorial will join those of some of the most famous names in English literature including poets Milton, Eliot and Wordsworth, playwrights Marlowe, Shakespeare and Wilde, and novelists Austen, Lawrence and Thackeray.

̽��ֱ��CS Lewis Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey will take place at noon on Friday, 22 November and will be open to all those who have requested tickets. A collection at the service will be dedicated to the CS Lewis Scholarship.

̽��ֱ��current chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge is Professor Helen Cooper. Like Lewis’s, her work emphasises the continuity of literature across the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Early in her career she studied pastoral literature from the late Classical period to Milton. Her more recent books include one on romance, from its invention in the 12th century to the death of Shakespeare, and another on Shakespeare’s debt to the Middle Ages. She has also published extensively on the Canterbury Tales.

“Scholarship – reading, lecturing, critical writing and teaching – was CS Lewis’s day job. He came to devotional writing and fiction, whether for children or adults, quite late in his life, and although he is now more widely known for those than for his critical work, it’s not because they are necessarily better or more important,” said Professor Cooper.

“From the moment of its publication in 1936, Lewis’s Allegory of Love transformed how medieval studies might be approached. ̽��ֱ��finest of his books, ̽��ֱ��Discarded Image, based on a series of his lectures, appeared after his death and remains the best short introduction there is to how people used to imagine the universe they inhabited.

“Lewis described his empathy with such lost ways of thinking by casting himself as ‘Old Western Man’, the equivalent of a surviving dinosaur who embodied what the age of the dinosaurs was like, and so could teach things that more conventional academic processes could not.”

As a child growing up in Northern Ireland, Lewis was enthralled by the myths and legends of Norse, Greek and Celtic literature. ̽��ֱ��young Lewis (known as Jack throughout his life) and his brother Warren invented a make-believe world called Boxen which was ruled by animals. Lewis fell in love with the landscape of the Mountains of Mourne which he said later inspired him to write the Narnia books.

Lewis’s deep interest in the bold universal themes that are woven into ancient, medieval and early modern literature endured throughout his life. His novels and poems draw on his extensive knowledge of texts such as ̽��ֱ��Voyage of St Brendan (which underlies ̽��ֱ��Voyage of the Dawn Treader) and the early Grail romances (which inspired That Hideous Strength). At Oxford ̽��ֱ��, where he read English Literature, he proved to be an outstanding student and, on graduating with a triple first, went on to teach there for more than 30 years.

Much of Lewis’s non-fiction writing deals with broad religious and spiritual questions, from the problem of evil to miracles. He was brought up in the Church of Ireland but as a teenager became an atheist. At Oxford, where he remained for most of his adult life, Lewis was part of a literary group nicknamed the Inklings, which included Tolkien. During this time, and influenced by his friends, he reluctantly re-embraced Christianity. In 1949 he wrote his first children’s novel, ̽��ֱ��Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which can be read as a fantasy adventure story and as an allegory for Christ’s crucifixion.

Professor Cooper commented: “ ̽��ֱ��power of myth and legend that Lewis had discovered as a child helps to drive the Narnia books. ̽��ֱ��myths might be Greek or Norse or Christian – the last a myth that ‘really happened’, as he came to believe – and the legends might be Arthurian; but he had the gift of conveying something of their deep imaginative hold through his stories of children travelling in strange worlds, of talking animals and of battles against evil.”

̽��ֱ��year that Lewis became the first Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge saw the publication of his third (originally fifth) and eagerly awaited Narnia novel, ̽��ֱ��Horse and His Boy.

“At Cambridge Lewis was taken to represent a diametrically opposite mode of criticism from that of his contemporary FR Leavis, and undergraduates often aligned themselves behind one or the other. But despite their disagreements, Lewis expressed his admiration for Leavis’s powers as a critic,” said Professor Cooper. “Lewis’s belief in the importance of historical contextualisation was in many ways ahead of its time. That alertness to context included his recognition of the centrality of God in the medieval and early modern world. His lectures on Spenser’s Faerie Queene, like his earlier work on Milton, demanded that even atheist readers should start by understanding what each poet was attempting to do, and that included their reflection of, and on, the religion of their own age.”

Lewis worked in Cambridge for nine years. In August 1963, having discovered that he was terminally ill, he resigned his chair. He died in his home in Oxford and was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington. News of his death was overshadowed by the assassination of JF Kennedy.

Professor Helen Cooper is the sixth scholar, and second female scholar, to hold the chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. Like Lewis, she holds it in conjunction with a fellowship at Magdalene College.

Inset images from top: Magdalene College, jefurii (via Flickr), Keir Hardie (via Flickr)

CS Lewis, creator of some of the most-loved children’s stories and also a scholar of medieval and early modern literature, died half a century ago on 22 November. A scholarship to be set up in his name will support an outstanding graduate to study at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��

̽��ֱ��finest of his books, ̽��ֱ��Discarded Image, based on a series of his lectures, appeared after his death and remains the best short introduction there is to how people used to imagine the universe they inhabited.

Professor Helen Cooper

GeeJo via Wikimedia

̽��ֱ��Searcher, a statue of CS Lewis by sculptor, Ross Wilson, at Holywood Arches Library in Belfast

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Children’s literature an escape from the adult world

sjr81 — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:01:12 +0000

Dr Louise Joy is speaking at this year’s Festival of Ideas at Cambridge – the UK’s only festival covering the arts, humanities and social sciences – which runs from October 19-30 and is almost entirely free.

Dr Joy, a Director of Studies at Homerton College, puts forward the notion that reading and writing children’s books is a symbolic retreat from the disappointment of reality for adults.

Literary classics such as Kenneth Grahame’s ̽��ֱ��Wind in the Willows and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland have been lovingly cherished and re-published over the centuries. Although shelved as children’s literature, these books have remained immensely popular with adults.

Why do we still find such comfort in re-reading these children’s classics? What is it about these stories which so deeply penetrate our collective psyche? Many literary scholars and commentators have explored how children’s classics interpret childhood, but Dr Joy claims that these books can tell us far more about the adult world than they can about children.

She argues that the characters and stories of children’s classics reflect what we in the adult world lack, desire, and consequently idealises.

She said: “Children’s classics are written by adults, valued by adults, published by adults and celebrated by adults. Instead of telling us about childhood or the child condition, they more obviously tell us something about the adult condition.

“By identifying recurrent motifs and themes in children’s classics, I am attempting to provide a new way of thinking about what we, as adults, desire childhood to be and children to be like. ̽��ֱ��same representations of childhood can be seen again and again in children’s classics, suggesting that we treasure the books that evoke that which the adult world lacks and we wish it contained. We cherish children’s classics precisely because they represent a world that does not resemble the world as we experience it.”

Dr Joy will use the Festival of Ideas to talk about her research on Wednesday, 26 October, 6.30-7.30pm, at the Faculty of English at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��. Her lecture is entitled Re-reading Children’s Classics.

Many of the most revered children’s books are those which younger readers find the most impenetrable. Ask a child what he or she thinks of Alice in Wonderland, and many will describe it as a scary, weird and difficult reading experience. Ask the same child ten years later, and they may remember the text with fondness. Many adults and children have never even read these famous texts from cover to cover, but the worlds they depict have rooted themselves in our culture through film, pictorial art, and language itself. So why is it that adults distort their childhood memories and look back on these texts with such nostalgia?

Joy argues that adult writers and readers hold an idealised mythology of childhood, a mythology that is kept alive and re-animated by our culture. Many of these texts depict a form of childhood that is far removed from the kind of life children have ever experienced.

Characters in children’s classics value simplicity, unpretentiousness, compassion, loyalty and tolerance. They are often free spirits, unbothered by peer-pressure or social institutions.

“In the fictional world, humans can get on with events; actions and emotions are un-crippled by the affliction of self-consciousness. This is the key feature of the texts which are celebrated over the centuries; they represent a world which is liberated from self-consciousness, self-doubt, self-scrutiny and self-interest,” said Dr Joy.

One theme which she analyses is friendship. Toad of Toad Hall in ̽��ֱ��Wind in the Willows is kind and generous, but also a blathering crackpot with a criminal fetish for fast cars. Winnie the Pooh’s Eeyore is a cynical, nihilistic egotist and Tigger a possible depressive. Yet these fictional chums create and maintain friendship on a transparent level, regarding each other with mutual affection and appreciation. Think of Piglet giving up his house to a homeless Pooh Bear, or Grahame’s Rat taking Mole boating on the river. They view one another’s eccentricities as loveable idiosyncrasies, and not as irritating neuroses or dysfunctions. Children’s literature suggests that being part of a diverse menagerie of personalities is an enriching and ennobling experience.

“A specific kind of friendship is represented and celebrated in children’s classics: it is non-narcissistic. In this idealised form, friends are tolerant of one another’s differences. Friendship is founded on people coming together, sharing experiences and activities. Gone are the complicated, vexed relationships based on need, self-interest and power dynamics, so typical of the adult world,” Dr Joy explains.

In a similar way, conversation in children’s literature is clear and direct. Characters choose their words carefully and precisely. As a result, meaning is nearly always successfully and considerately transacted, and characters rarely misunderstand each other. In contrast, in adult fiction – as in the adult world – conversation is invariably a mine-field of miscommunication, causing confusion, heartbreak, and even death.

Added Dr Joy: “Language is forever inadequate in encapsulating what we wish to say, and we are forever unable to say what we actually mean. Adults use language not merely to communicate, but also to not communicate; we use fillers and meaningless words to express emotion, to conceal meaning, to pass the time or to feign interest.”

She argues that the direct speech typically found in children’s classics therefore has a deep-seated appeal for adults.

She said: “It satisfies adult fantasies for language to be used as a straightforward vehicle for communication. A reason why adults derive such solace from re-reading these books is because it is a pleasure and a relief to witness conversation taking shape in this fulfilling form. ̽��ֱ��pathos, the tragedy and the weight of the failure to communicate, notoriously exemplified in works such as Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a theme which often drives the adult novel. In a children’s book this possibility isn’t really entertained.”

Entitled Literature’s Children, Joy’s upcoming book delves into the symbolic significance of children’s classics, teasing out answers to big philosophical questions such as the adult affliction of self-consciousness and the mythology of childhood. She says children’s literature “refracts adult consciousness, offering and enabling us to pass on to our own children the world as we wish it, and precisely not as we find it.”

A ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge academic is to suggest that grown-ups enjoy children’s classics because they are dissatisfied with life in the adult world.

We cherish children’s classics precisely because they represent a world that does not resemble the world as we experience it.

Louise Joy

David Masters via Flickr

Children's books

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